Why Claude Feels Different (And What That Means for AI) | The a16z Show

1. 0:00 – 2:05

   Tech Culture Collision

   1. SIsignüll0:00

      It's funny how the internet now, everybody can comment on everything. Every technology cycle to me is increasingly harder because you're probably going into a different part of how the human mind operates. Right now, we're like developing personality. That's, that's insane.

   2. AAAnish Acharya0:14

      There's technology, there's culture, which is collective, and then there's our individual progress as a human species. Culture's changing, technology's improving. Where are we as people?

   3. SIsignüll0:26

      I can't believe the scale at which we're at now. Like it's absolutely unbelievable. I was at OpenAI, we were discussing a bunch of things around how do you think about personality development of models, and these are really technically hard problems. I think the number one challenge even OpenAI mentioned is that how do we make the power of the models more easily accessible and useful in terms of what they can do? And I think this is happening with agents, but it still seems very primitive and very inaccessible to a lot of individuals.

   4. AAAnish Acharya0:55

      I think that the number one way you change the NPS of AI is you make important things cheap quickly.

   5. ETErik Torenberg1:02

      Here live with Signal, the great culture commentator of our time. You have opinions on everything from-

   6. SIsignüll1:09

      [chuckles]

   7. ETErik Torenberg1:10

      ... you know, what's happening in AI, both as a consumer, but also the industry, to what's happening in all the big tech companies, to what's happened in dating markets more broadly, to how the product should be developed. There's, there's no commentator like you. There's no sort of, um... How do you sort of make sense of yourself o-on the internet in terms of how you thread these topics together? What, what sort of threads it all?

   8. SIsignüll1:34

      I mean, I could have an opinion on Iran [chuckles] and dating at the same time. Maybe even-

   9. ETErik Torenberg1:39

      Within minutes of each other, yeah.

   10. SIsignüll1:40

       Maybe even Iranian dating.

   11. ETErik Torenberg1:41

       [laughs]

   12. SIsignüll1:42

       Like-

   13. ETErik Torenberg1:43

       You're like, "By the way."

   14. SIsignüll1:44

       How, how does it work there? Are they using Tinder? Like I don't know. I mean, uh, [chuckles] there's probably several jokes about there about love bombing and stuff. [laughs] Sorry.

   15. ETErik Torenberg1:54

       Oh, all right.

   16. SIsignüll1:55

       I apologize. [laughs]

   17. ETErik Torenberg1:57

       Yeah, don't apologize.

   18. SIsignüll1:58

       Okay, I have this weird tendency to where I like to... I like to add humor to things that are-

   19. ETErik Torenberg2:04

       Yeah, don't worry

   20. SIsignüll2:04

       ... maybe not inappropriate.

2. 2:05 – 7:15

   Internet Commentary Mindset

   1. SIsignüll2:05

      Anyway, I, I think, look [clears throat] it's funny how the internet now, everybody can comment on everything.

   2. ETErik Torenberg2:10

      Yeah.

   3. SIsignüll2:10

      There's a lot of people that have a, a great perspective in a singular dimension. Got Ben Thompson writing about technology and markets, and if you wanna have an analysis of an earnings report of Microsoft, I mean, who better in the world than Ben Thompson? I mean, you can, you can... Packy writes about-

   4. ETErik Torenberg2:29

      Yeah

   5. SIsignüll2:29

      ... deep tech and crazy, I think 40-page papers about industries and things, and really fun to read, really great things. What I notice is like I've been in technology for such a long time, uh, since I was a kid, and, and I'm particularly fascinated with culture in general as well, and I think that intersection of tech and culture is so fascinating to me. And I like to relate everything back to computer science and how I've learned about the world through [chuckles] computer science and computers in general. And, uh, I f- I think all my tweets and things are really, in essence, relating the idea of life to technology and culture to technology in maybe an interesting or just how my mind works. I think my writing is all a reflection of the prompts that happen in my brain that get translated somehow into words that are in the right order that other people can interpret and therefore have a reaction to, and maybe generate a little bit of hate online or a little bit of love, and I think that's, that's actually quite beautiful that we're all doing this.

   6. ETErik Torenberg3:31

      That's the most poetic thing I've ever heard about. [laughs]

   7. SIsignüll3:33

      I do have a Shakespeare profile photo. [laughs]

   8. ETErik Torenberg3:36

      Exactly.

   9. SIsignüll3:37

      Um, and, uh, you know, I think that-that's been great. I, I grew up playing a game called SimCity, and, um, in SimCity, you can increase the simulation speeds. There's a button that allows you to increase the simulation of the city, and the cars move faster, and the people move faster, and the disasters happen faster, and everything is just increased. And I feel like in the recent, maybe obviously in the last 20 years with, with respect to iPhone and whatnot, but man, in the last two, three, four years, holy shit. Who the hell hit the 100X speed?

   10. ETErik Torenberg4:08

       Yeah.

   11. SIsignüll4:09

       Like it feels ridiculous. Like if I talk to somebody that something happened last, like last month, it feels like it happened like 10 years ago. Like Nicolás Maduro got pulled from Venezuela and brought to America [chuckles] in the most amazing outfit, and [chuckles] people forgot about this.

   12. ETErik Torenberg4:23

       Yeah.

   13. SIsignüll4:24

       Like it's, it's just incredibly fascinating the way that the, the world is moving so fast, and technology is accelerating that. I mean, if you were-- if it's the fuel that is empowering that engine, and I don't know what we did, but it's moving really, really fast.

   14. AAAnish Acharya4:40

       And then do you think if I was to almost separate the three ideas, you know, there's technology, there's culture, which is collective, and then there's this sort of however you measure our individual progress as a human species. Culture's changing, technology's improving. Where are we as people? Are we more spiritually mature, less spiritually mature than we were 50 years ago, 500 years ago, 5,000 years ago? Or are we just basically, you know, Neanderthals with iPhones?

   15. SIsignüll5:06

       I think generally, technology should help us understand our, ourselves in, in a better way such that we are able to have, um, intellectual, spiritual, potential growth as a species, as a collective and the individual, I suspect. Um, and I think, I firmly believe that I'm like pro-technology helping achieve that. I love using AI to be able to understand myself. Like I, if I say something, it's like, "Wait, am I... Does this make sense? Does this... Is this more interesting?" Like, how, how do I personally think about it? This is the way that I'm... What am I missing? And those are really things that help me grow intellectually, spiritually, personally, relationships, all of those things. So inherently, I mean, if I understand your question correctly, it's more like these things are really, um, helping us experience ourselves much better. And I think that probably is the greatest achievement you can possibly have. I mean, we're tool builders. [chuckles] And every tool that we've ever built has helped us progress as a human, human species or individually, uh, whether it's art-Or the wheel or whatever. And, um, I, I can't believe the, the scale at which we're at now, right? Like it's, it's absolutely unbelievable. And I think what's shocking to me is that the collective has not caught on yet.

   16. ETErik Torenberg6:27

       Do, do you think the norms around AI relationships with boyfriend, girlfriend, or just, you know, best friendships are going to be something in the next, you know, five to 10 years extreme to a degree that seems unimaginable n- right now for, for the average person? Or what do you think?

   17. SIsignüll6:43

       When you have ease of access and reward structures around it, and a human desire paired with it that's deep, I think you get some interesting outcomes. And the desire and the, the pursuit of connection is an incredible and important element of any human's existence. And the idea that AI can help you facilitate that with depth and scale and ever-ending, like AI doesn't get tired.

3. 7:15 – 13:31

   AI Adoption And Building Advice

   1. ETErik Torenberg7:15

      What else is surprising you most about how people are interacting with AI, particularly the different models or... What, what, what are, what are you observing as you're looking at the landscape and trying to make sense of where things are going?

   2. SIsignüll7:28

      Well, first of all, I don't think most people are utilizing them anything beyond the basics. [chuckles] Like, it's fascinating to me that every single time we're focused on really advanced capability demonstration, like holy crap, this is a PhD researcher or whatever. Yet I don't think most people are utilizing in such a fashion, obviously. And I think, um, most people are utilizing them for very, very, very basic tasks. Um, and so I think we're in like the Stone Ages of how people view and perceive and use these things, even though there's a billion people utilizing them, but they're not utilizing them to the full capabilities. Like, I think the number one challenge for even I think OpenAI mentioned this, is that how do we make this stuff, the power of the models more easily accessible and useful, um, in terms of what they can do? And I think this is happening with agents. It's happening today, but it's, it still seems very primitive and very, um, inaccessible to a lot of individuals. I think this is... I personally like to think about this because the way that I like to think about the world. My, one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes, and this is why the Shakespeare picture exists, is, um, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

   3. ETErik Torenberg8:34

      Mm.

   4. SIsignüll8:35

      And Shakespeare was able to capture an essence of the world in very sim- like not simple terminology. Maybe, I don't know, back then it was simple, but in, in a few words-

   5. ETErik Torenberg8:46

      Yeah

   6. SIsignüll8:46

      ... or a few sentences. And, um, and, uh, I think we need to, we need to make this stuff much more easily accessible and useful for individuals. Um, I don't know how that will be, what that will look like, but it's certainly something that I love to think about personally. And, um, uh, I don't, I don't know where we'll, we'll, where we'll end up, but I view it more as an art than a science at the point, at the moment.

   7. ETErik Torenberg9:09

      Yeah.

   8. SIsignüll9:09

      Um, but it's, it's, it's cool. It's, it's a fun, it's a fun time to exist as a technologist.

   9. ETErik Torenberg9:16

      A lot of people are wondering what to even work on in the age of sort of the big labs. Like what, what to start, what to... How to think about what could be, you know, a real company versus something that they'll end up doing or, or what's just worth doing. How, how have you s- how have you thought about it, or how do you advise people to think about that?

   10. SIsignüll9:31

       A lot of AI today is very much the big labs kind of are dominating consumer territory, whether it's OpenAI and Anthropic, and then tons and tons of people trying to find a business use case for it in various verticals. It's interesting. I personally focus on what I'm passionate about. Like, I was at a demo day or whatever, and there's a lot of individuals who I thought clearly they were... They found the idea through AI to work o- what to work on. And it's fascinating. I was like, "Are you really interested in real estate?" Like, I don't know. Or, "Do you wanna spend your time working on this?" And, "Is this an interesting problem?" Like, I, I don't think about it as from a technology perspective. Like, screw AI. I don't care about... Like, what do you, what, what, what area are you interested in? What, what, what thing, what thing drives you? Like, if I were an investor, um, I think that's probably the only thing that matters is like, are you gonna keep going into this problem space, um, if you're not that interested in it? Look, we're having a lot of fun doing this, and I think if you're not having a lot of fun doing stuff, you probably shouldn't work on it. It, it's something that, like, it's a privilege thing, obviously.

   11. ETErik Torenberg10:39

       Yeah.

   12. SIsignüll10:39

       And often a lot of people don't find work fun. They have to do it because it's economically necessary. But, um, if you're gonna build a company, try to have fun with it. There's a great quote, um, in the Bhagavad Gita, which I read recently again, and it was like, you know, you're not entitled to the fruits of your labor. And, um, I never think about the outcomes. I just try to figure out what I enjoy, what I, what kind of, uh, how much fun I like to have and the problems that I like thinking about. I like... All this account that I have is just pure fun. Like, I get... I, I really enjoy talking and, and thinking about this, and my, my brain prompts me to think about it. [chuckles] We were talking about, you know, the real prompt is in your brain. [laughs] Like, that is where it originates.

   13. ETErik Torenberg11:27

       Yeah.

   14. SIsignüll11:28

       And then you're translating that into some text that you're sending into AI-

   15. ETErik Torenberg11:31

       Right

   16. SIsignüll11:32

       ... where we call that a prompt. And sure, yeah, but, like, without the, the spark in your existence, in your inner self-

   17. ETErik Torenberg11:40

       Mm-hmm

   18. SIsignüll11:40

       ... nothing would happen.

   19. ETErik Torenberg11:41

       This is some Rick Rubin shit, man.

   20. SIsignüll11:43

       It's true. Like, it's fucking-

   21. ETErik Torenberg11:45

       [laughs]

   22. SIsignüll11:45

       It's, it's so fucking true.

   23. ETErik Torenberg11:46

       I agree.

   24. SIsignüll11:46

       Like how-

   25. ETErik Torenberg11:46

       He's, he's-

   26. AAAnish Acharya11:47

       We should get you together with Rick.

   27. ETErik Torenberg11:48

       Yeah.

   28. SIsignüll11:48

       This is why, this is why, you know, I think Rick Rubin, you know, people made fun of him.

   29. ETErik Torenberg11:52

       No, he's amazing.

   30. AAAnish Acharya11:54

       He's incredible.
4. 13:31 – 19:49

   Model Personalities And Future Interfaces

   1. SIsignüll13:31

      I, I think of most people as one type of artist or another.

   2. AAAnish Acharya13:36

      Okay.

   3. SIsignüll13:36

      And they have like, they have like brush strokes they use. You know, I was like Monet, and it was like I loved... What I love is I love going in and looking at the actual brush strokes of the painting. Then you get these like pixel level, um, understanding of like, wow, he used this color for this brush stroke, whatever. And then you zoom out and you're like, "Oh my God, I see this wonderful little painting," and, um, I'm deeply inspired by it. So it's just like I think people are utilizing different styles and different forms of like a different type of, um... But it's in the end, when you're doing anything new-

   4. AAAnish Acharya14:11

      Uh-huh

   5. SIsignüll14:12

      ... it is, it is just a, a sort of a canva- like the painting and, and, and, you know, some people like hard edge paintings and, you know, this Renaissance style, and some people like modern art, and some people like this-

   6. AAAnish Acharya14:23

      Mm

   7. SIsignüll14:23

      ... you know, water lilies of Cl- And I think just a different form, and at least all the initial versions of it, you know, going back to the Web 2.0 era with, with Ke- Kevin Rose and the... It was a very different time because building network products like that, whether it's Dig or Twitter-

   8. AAAnish Acharya14:41

      Right

   9. SIsignüll14:42

      ... um, fundamentally different than developing personalities of a model.

   10. AAAnish Acharya14:46

       Uh-huh.

   11. SIsignüll14:46

       Like holy crap, I was at OpenAI, and we were discussing a bunch of things around how do you think about personality development of models and, you know, the, the fact that you can't really easily change them, or how do you reduce the sycophancy of the models? And these are really technically hard problems. And I think every, every technology cycle to me is like, um, is increasingly harder because you're probably going into a different part of how the human mind or the human bo- like operates. Right now we're like developing personality. That's, that's insane.

   12. AAAnish Acharya15:16

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SIsignüll15:17

       Like if you asked 10 years ago, saying [chuckles] we were gonna build personalities for computers, you would've kinda been like, "Wait, what?"

   14. AAAnish Acharya15:23

       Yeah.

   15. SIsignüll15:24

       "What does that really mean?"

   16. AAAnish Acharya15:25

       Yeah.

   17. SIsignüll15:25

       And these guys were with, with Kevin and Jack and whatnot, they were architecting, um, I think delivery vehicles in some sense, right? Like they were developing architecture for humans to add payload and then send it to another human.

   18. AAAnish Acharya15:43

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SIsignüll15:44

       Whether it's broadcast or one-to-one, uh, you know, with Dig was the news and people posted in the comments and, and Twitter was like another version of that. Um, now I think we're kind of designing this upper echelon of, of how a human personality works and how intelligence works, and I think that's a grand... Like it's a, such a... It no longer feels like a delivery vehicle. It feels like the actual thing and the payload and the, and the underlying... I don't know if that makes sense. That's how my mi- mind works. I don't know if you guys think about it that way. But in some sense, um, we've, we've, we've moved up leveled a lot, and the complexity has increased drastically.

   20. AAAnish Acharya16:22

       Mm-hmm.

   21. SIsignüll16:23

       Like training a model and then, you know, reinforcement learning, human feedback, what's interesting. There's like multiple different types of, um, ways that things engage. Uh, I think these are just-

   22. AAAnish Acharya16:35

       And talk a little bit more about what you've observed in terms of the personality differences be- between models or what, what you think particularly makes, you know, Claude so interesting or...

   23. SIsignüll16:43

       You know, I think one of the things that they focused on it, it... Going back to our Rick Rubin point, right? It's like it feels artisan. It feels like it's got a soul. Whereas I think in some sense, the other models feel a little bit more robotic and a little bit more utilitarian, if you will. And you know, if you think about what AGI is, and I think or there's a great, um, Simpsons episode, right, where one of the... Bart sells his soul for $5 to Milhouse. It was one of the most profound-

   24. AAAnish Acharya17:16

       Yeah

   25. SIsignüll17:16

       ... interesting episodes of The Simpsons. And okay, well, he wrote, he wrote Bart's soul on a piece of paper [chuckles] and then handed it to him.

   26. AAAnish Acharya17:25

       [chuckles]

   27. SIsignüll17:26

       And then he felt it. Like he felt like he didn't have a soul. And I found that really interesting because, you know, it sort of explores the idea of like, I think going back to our initial point, like what is a human and w- what, what are we? What are we doing here? How does technology help us in, in terms of understanding ourselves and the way that we exist? And I felt like there was like less sycophancy. There was this pushback. It was like talking to a real human being. It's personified. Like it's called Claude, and most-

   28. AAAnish Acharya17:57

       Yeah

   29. SIsignüll17:57

       ... Claude is known as a person. So it is, it feels very, um, crafted, artisan/ dare I say, premium to a certain extent. And I think it's been really fun. And one of my, uh, my sister is a doctor, and she randomly just [chuckles] she was using ChatGPT for a few years, and she canceled, and she was like, "I'm, I'm using Claude now," and I, I gotta be... I was like, "What?"How did you find out about this? What, what, what? It's, it's nuts, and I think it just goes to show you the, the proliferation and the, and the marketing and the storytelling of Claude has been aesthetically really next level. It's been really, really fun to watch. I like good products. I like talking about good products, and I like praising the people who make good products. That's, that's what we're about here, right? Like it's like give credit where credit is due. They've made a beautiful little tool, and when paired with like a, a thing in your pocket [chuckles] that is also crafted and artisan with Apple and iPhone and, and then you get this like really magical, intelligent experience on your device wherever you are.

   30. ETErik Torenberg18:59

       How do you think about what these product experiences might look like in a couple years? Like how do you think, how do you see the interface evolving or what, what are you sort of predicting in terms of what's on the, what's on the horizon?
5. 19:49 – 21:31

   Ambient AI Interfaces

   1. SIsignüll19:49

      exists? I mean, obviously movies have personified this, and, you know, there's been "Her" and whatnot, but it is gonna be fascinating to see how it weaves into your daily life, whether it's your home or work in, in a very ambient state. Um, I know it's not about like listening to you all the time potentially, or it's not about... But I think there's a lot of these explorations that have yet to be done, um, at the interface layers. Uh, how does AI talk to you first?

   2. ETErik Torenberg20:15

      Yeah.

   3. SIsignüll20:15

      Today that's a push notification, I think, roughly. Um, is that it? I don't know. Um, how does Apple integrate AI into iOS and weave it into the operating system and, um, how do we use application, applications or specific types of things? Are they even necessary anymore? Uh, do we even need an interface if we're just talking to it? I don't know. I think those are really interesting questions. I, I personally like the ambient l- AI layer. I think that's... You're seeing a little bit of this with like OpenClaw and whatnot, and sort of working, agents working in the background and kind of surfacing the right things at the right time. There was a great product a, a while ago that didn't work called Google Now. The whole purpose of Google Now was to kind of predict a search, right? It's like, "What are you gonna search for next, Erik?" Pos- like in some sense, right?

   4. ETErik Torenberg21:02

      Yeah.

   5. SIsignüll21:02

      Um, and, uh, it was ahead of its time in some sense. But when you marry it with context and intelligence, I think that is actually a huge vector for how to, to think about what the future of AI and how the stuff will weave into our lives, and I don't think anybody's... There's not gonna be a single person who doesn't use this stuff. It's just a matter of when.

   6. ETErik Torenberg21:29

      Yeah.

   7. SIsignüll21:30

      Right. Um, that's gonna

6. 21:31 – 22:49

   Learning Through Debate

   1. SIsignüll21:31

      be in- that's gonna be interesting. I don't know.

   2. ETErik Torenberg21:32

      On that note, just quick story. I remember asking Biology. I was like-

   3. SIsignüll21:35

      [laughs]

   4. ETErik Torenberg21:35

      "Biology, how do you know so much about, you know, um, crypto and economics and bio and math and science and, you know, all these things? Like give me all the books you read." He's like, "Books? I don't read books."

   5. SIsignüll21:48

      [laughs] Yeah.

   6. ETErik Torenberg21:49

      "I just get in fights with people on the internet." [laughs]

   7. SIsignüll21:51

      [laughs]

   8. ETErik Torenberg21:51

      "And then just, that's how I like internalize all the information. I like, it's real time. I, I need to know, I learn what I need to know to win the argument."

   9. SIsignüll21:57

      And it cools. [laughs] Yeah.

   10. ETErik Torenberg21:58

       [laughs] And then he like really remembers it.

   11. SIsignüll22:00

       Conceptually, those are really fun ways to have these discussions. I mean, obviously some of it's not kosher to possibly say or do out loud, but I think that's actually really cool. I... Learning from other people is what we do best. Like-

   12. ETErik Torenberg22:10

       Yeah

   13. SIsignüll22:11

       ... monkeys or like, you know, apes are watching other people. Other, other... They, they use tools-

   14. ETErik Torenberg22:16

       Yeah

   15. SIsignüll22:16

       ... because they learn how to use. I... That's wonderful.

   16. ETErik Torenberg22:18

       Yeah.

   17. SIsignüll22:18

       Imagine if I'm using a tool wrong, like hammer backwards or whatever. [chuckles] Somebody's like, "No, you're an idiot."

   18. ETErik Torenberg22:24

       Yeah.

   19. SIsignüll22:24

       [chuckles] "This is how you use it." Wonderful.

   20. ETErik Torenberg22:26

       Yeah.

   21. SIsignüll22:26

       Now I've benefited. Um, maybe that other person got a dopamine hit because they, [chuckles] they proved me wrong, wrong. And I think in the end, we all win. It's great. Uh, and I, I, I think that's how I treat my account in some ways. It's almost as if I'm not really trying to gain anything. It's just I don't have anything to lose.

   22. ETErik Torenberg22:44

       Yeah.

   23. SIsignüll22:44

       Like what, what do I lose by being wrong?

   24. ETErik Torenberg22:47

       So I have a question for you.

7. 22:49 – 29:17

   Making AI Popular

   1. ETErik Torenberg22:49

      Um, there's a study that came out a few weeks ago that generated a bunch of conversation, which is that in China, AI is highly popular.

   2. SIsignüll22:57

      Yeah.

   3. ETErik Torenberg22:57

      In the US, AI is very unpopular. In fact, it's even less popular than ice right now. [laughs]

   4. SIsignüll23:03

      [laughs] Okay.

   5. ETErik Torenberg23:05

      The NPS of AI is not great in this country. How would you fix that?

   6. SIsignüll23:11

      Like I always think about movements, right? When people create movements, and all the movements are rooted in simple storytelling. In some ways, we're in like a fear-driven development, you know? Like there's a lot of fear that's being generated as a result of this, and I think there's a positive framing to all this. Look, I think we're moving towards a world where hopefully there's highly abundant elements of everything. Like right now we all f- feel like we're fighting for resources, right? Whether it's capital, labor, whatever. Like people think of the world as a finite amount of things. Finite. Like a lot of people have this like... You know, in Silicon Valley, we have this classic thing where it's like everything is grow the pie, you know?

   7. ETErik Torenberg23:55

      Yeah, positive sum.

   8. SIsignüll23:56

      Positive sum. Everything's positive sum. Normal people don't really think about that. Like they don't really think about growing the pie. At least, I don't know, I'd love to get your perspective on this.

   9. ETErik Torenberg24:05

      Yeah.

   10. SIsignüll24:05

       Which is like we're fortunately are, we are in some sense primitive, and then we are competing for resources, competing for finite things and, and whatnot. But I think the framing has to be around like hopefully we are, if we, if we, if we do our jobs well, we're moving towards a

   11. AAAnish Acharya24:22

       A world that's highly abundant in everything that humans might actually need. I think that the number one way you change the NPS of AI is you make important things cheap quickly. Hmm. Like soon, okay? And we've all seen the famous chart that Mark has tweeted 1,000 times, right? Which is the diffusion of products, prices on a per product category basis, right? So this is the famous one where it's 1970, everything is essentially, you know, referenced to that date, and then certain things get more expensive, certain things get cheaper. The number one thing that gets cheaper is flat screen TVs. So flat screen TVs are asymptoting to essentially $0. Yep. The things that are getting edu- expensive are healthcare, education, and housing, okay? There's actually a little bit of math, and I did this math a few months ago, that you can do to show how you can make education and healthcare cheaper with AI very, very quickly. And by cheaper, I don't mean disinflation, which is a reduced rate of inflation. I mean actual deflation, like cheaper than it was last year, okay? Yeah. So here's the math. Just consider it for a moment. Education's actually the easiest one. Education, if you restore student-administrator ratios to what they were 10 years ago, and you make professors modestly more productive, modestly, then you can actually just have education and school getting cheaper every year. Like the explosion of administrators, not professors, not teachers, but administrators is- Yeah ... totally under-discussed, and it's insane. So you can make education cheaper, like we could do it right away. We already have all the technology. We just have to make a different set of choices. For healthcare, 45% of healthcare cost is administration, okay? It's all this overhead, and if you've, you've done the healthcare thing, we've all done it, right? The like revenue cycle management, all the back office stuff, all the nurses phoning you to tell you what drugs to take the night before you get a procedure. Like all of that stuff is overhead, and all that adds to cost. If you can take a bunch of the cost out of that with models... And by the way, these are the num- by category, the number one consumer of open AI models, for example, are healthcare companies and healthcare startups. You can make healthcare cheaper year over year. So I think we should s- our like moonshot as an industry should be to make these two things way cheaper in the next five years, and that's how we're gonna win the hearts and minds. Would you subsidize it? What do you mean? As in like effectively, like should the model companies give it away for free to these industries? Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know how you subsidize it. Maybe a cost, maybe a cost- A cost or- ... or something like that. But it's very interesting because actually, and Dixon said this a while ago, which really got me thinking, and he's like, "How many of our problems in society are actually intelligence bound versus being collective action problems?" Hmm. And that's why the third category I mel- mentioned, healthcare, education, housing. Housing has nothing to do with intelligence or technology. It's entirely collective action. Totally. We could just build skyscrapers in Marin tomorrow, and it would be abundant, cheap housing for everybody, but we have to decide to do that together. I wonder if giving stuff away or making free... I, I wonder if people will realize it, you know? I think generally the world has gotten cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Like you can go to Walmart and buy a hair dryer for five bucks. That's ridiculous. Like I, I, I remember I, I... Not to do this again, but [laughs] I tweeted about this. Oh, God. Here we are. Of course I remember you tweeting about it. Let's get the book read. I'm the encyclopedia of signal tweets, bro. This guy's like, "I tweeted about that." [laughing] [laughs] Remember? No, it's like, um, the billionaires drink the same Coke as you are. Yeah. They're using the same goddamn iPhone. Totally. They're using Claude and ChatGPT just like you are. Yep. And like the, the underlying essence of equality or the, the access is, is pretty much like incredibly similar. Like, I mean- But they don't have the same healthcare you have, and we should fix that. That's true. If you get sick as a billionaire versus a normal person, [laughs] what's the d- delta? Dude, you'd be surprised. I mean, look at New York State right now, right? Your beloved New York City and New York State. Assuming you have insurance, right? Like that's probably the, the- In New York State, they're about to make it illegal at the state level to get, to give or receive, um, health advice or financial advice via model. Oh my God. [laughs] Like how fucked up is that, right? So what does that mean? People who have lawyers and doctors already are gonna be unaffected, and people who use the models for lawyers and doctors are- Yeah ... once again set back enormously. Like how can we be okay with that, you know? So a lot of these are own goals. It's crazy. If you look, the state of Massachusetts made it illegal to buy Apple stock because it was too speculative when, when Apple was going public. This is like the early '80s. Incredible. You know? The home of Elizabeth Warren. It's like we must protect the consumers from these abnormal financial gains. [laughing] You know? Like the number of ridiculous things that are done in the name of protection, you know? And I, I think that is a fundamental underestimation of the average consumer. Yeah. Right? I think people are pretty smart, pretty savvy. They talk, they'll figure things out, and if you don't prevent them from accessing the tools, like they'll use those tools to make their lives better, you know?

8. 29:17 – 33:05

   Ownership And Next Steps

   1. AAAnish Acharya29:17

      I have a weird idea. Tell me. Um, the fact that we don't allow normal people to have equity share or- Yeah ... stakes in OpenAI and Claude. It's insane. Like imagine if normal people were like, "I, I own a piece of these things." I mean, maybe that would feel much better. Yeah. And they would, they would have this ownership mentality, um, and right now all this concentration is happening in Silicon Valley and a few people- Yeah ... give people access to, to, to create an, a sense of ownership. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier. And therefore, like imagine if a billion people had stock in OpenAI in some way, shape, or form. And maybe that's a dumb idea, but would they be more bought in in AI? Would they have a positive view of AI? Or what if their kids did? What if you rolled it into the Trump accounts? True. You know? And it's like, "Look, I have my job and I think I'll be okay, and now I know that my kids will be okay too." Yeah, they have a stake in the future. That's right. But quite literally. You know, you could market it that way. That to me has been a very weird development where I do think people perceive tech individuals as they're hoarding or concentrating resources and wealth. Um, for example-

   2. SIsignüll30:23

      We're all privileged in technology. And it's wonderful, and a lot of us are exposed to this, whether it's via equity or whatnot or even just usage, you know, you're like... But I, I think there's potentially a perception with all the power law outcomes that happen-

   3. SPSpeaker30:39

      Yeah

   4. SIsignüll30:40

      ... that, that there is a concentration or a hoarding-

   5. SPSpeaker30:43

      Yeah

   6. SIsignüll30:43

      ... whether if you wanna use a negative terminology like that.

   7. SPSpeaker30:45

      Yeah.

   8. SIsignüll30:46

      Um, and that creates a weird dynamic.

   9. SPSpeaker30:49

      Right.

   10. SIsignüll30:49

       Like I'm going to get left behind-

   11. SPSpeaker30:51

       Yep

   12. SIsignüll30:52

       ... while the guys in San Francisco are-

   13. SPSpeaker30:54

       Yeah

   14. SIsignüll30:54

       ... going to be enormously wealthy. And that's probably one. I, I've heard people feeling this way and, and especially, you know, there's potentially a negative sentiment in technology and-

   15. SPSpeaker31:05

       Yeah

   16. SIsignüll31:06

       ... the NPS score probably reflects that, right?

   17. SPSpeaker31:08

       Yeah.

   18. SIsignüll31:08

       Um, and that is, that is not... I think that's something to be fixed, and ownership might, might, might fix that.

   19. SPSpeaker31:16

       Uh-huh.

   20. SIsignüll31:16

       But any-- I mean, I t- I, uh, I love-- I, I think there's this... The power law dynamic that Peter introduced is really fascinating to me because it, it, it was like business outcomes.

   21. SPSpeaker31:28

       Yeah.

   22. SIsignüll31:28

       And the internet drives power law outcomes in a variety of different other scenarios as well.

   23. SPSpeaker31:34

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SIsignüll31:34

       Not just business. And, and I think, um, people are starting to catch up, and people are seeing the sort of wealth discrepancy that exists. And technology is a crazy accelerator. Like we talked about this right at the beginning. It's-

   25. SPSpeaker31:47

       Yeah

   26. SIsignüll31:48

       ... and, and this, this, this entity is, is accelerating in returns. I, I think that's maybe something to look at. Uh, I don't know if that's the right answer or whatever, but I, I did see that tweet about the-

   27. SPSpeaker32:01

       Yeah

   28. SIsignüll32:01

       ... the, the concentration of like the inaccessible-

   29. SPSpeaker32:03

       Yeah

   30. SIsignüll32:04

       ... um, private-- The companies are staying private longer.

Episode duration: 33:19